Pauper's Cowhides, The

DESCRIPTION: "Say, RIchards, have you seen the paupers With a mortgage on their lands, Going to congress with their cowhides." "Schemers" steal their crops; "Money-changers" will not yield, but "Thus must be the hayseed jubilo And the pauper's kingdom come."
AUTHOR: Words: Luna E. (Mrs. J. T.) Kellie (1857-1940)
EARLIEST DATE: 1890 (Farmer's Alliance, October 4, 1890 edition, according to Welsch-NebraskaPioneerLore)
KEYWORDS: poverty derivative political money
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Welsch-NebraskaPioneerLore, pp. 67-68, "The Pauper's Cowhides" (1 text, tune referenced)
ADDITIONAL: Nebraska Folklore, Pamphlet Eighteen, "Farmers' Alliance Songs of the 1890's," Federal Writers' Project, 1938, p. 3, "The Pauper's Cowhides" (1 text)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Kingdom Coming (The Year of Jubilo)" (tune)
NOTES [213 words]: For background on Luna Kellie, see the notes to "Marching for Freedom."
(Bartlett) Richards, according to the Nebraska Folklore notes, was "president of the Nebraska Land and Feeding company and a much hated ranchman." According to Dorothy Weyer Creigh, Nebraska: A Bicentennial History, W. W. Norton & Co., 1977, p. 143, "In October 1903, Bartlett Richards and William Comstock, president and vice-president of the Nebraska Land and Feeding Company, were indicted in federal court on charges of illegally fencing government land. Their Spade, Bar C, and Overton ranches in Cherry, Sheridan, and Box Butte counties comprised one of the biggest spreads in the country." The two were also brothers-in-law. Creigh on p. 144 says that they pleaded guilty on November 13, 1905 to "having illegally fenced 212,000 acres of government land but asked for leniency inasmuch as they were removing the fences." They were fined $300 and court costs, and were put in custody for six hours (hours, not days, months, years) -- which they spent having lunch with their lawyer!
Everyone up to President Theodore Roosevelt was upset, and a new trial resulted in them being sentenced to a year in federal prison in 1910. Richards became ill in prison and died in 1911 while receiving treatment. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.4
File: Wels067

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